United States presidential election, 1972

The United States presidential election, 1972 was held on 7 November 1972. The incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon ran for re-election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate, and he ran against the anti-war Democratic Party candidate George McGovern and Thomas Eagleton (later replaced by Sargent Shriver after his depression problems were publicized). Nixon campaigned on his establishment of relations with China, his scaling-down of the Vietnam War troop levels through "Vietnamization", and the positive state of the economy; McGovern was seen as a left-wing extremist due to his affiliation with the New Left Democrats. Nixon won the election with 520 electoral votes to McGovern's 17.